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Introduction

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Book cover Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence

Part of the book series: Law and Philosophy Library ((LAPS,volume 92))

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Abstract

The general subject of the book, namely reasoning with evidence to establish the facts in criminal cases. It discusses the background of the research, which is a combination of legal theory, argumentation theory, artificial intelligence and legal psychology, and it introduces the idea of sense-making, structuring complex masses of information so that it can be analysed. The main aim of the book is set as the development of a (formal logical) theory, based on reasoning with stories and arguments, that may serve as the basis for such sense-making.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Examples of rules about the legal validity or admissibility of evidence can be found in the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure (DCCP) and the American Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE), respectively .

  2. 2.

    Most of Twining’s work on evidence includes a section on the Rationalist Tradition . For an overview see (Anderson et al., 2005, pp. 78–86) and for a more extensive account see Twining (1994, Chapter 3) and (2006, Chapter 3) .

  3. 3.

    The term was coined by Richard Lempert (1986)

  4. 4.

    This term was to my knowledge first used by Twining (2007) . The research on Modified Wigmorean Analysis encompasses a large amount of interesting material on a multitude of different subjects. The “locus classicus” would be Wigmore’s (1931) work . Important new work in this school of thought is the Analysis of Evidence, authored by Anderson , Twining and Schum (2005) . This book, which I have used extensively in the development of my own ideas, contains information on a wide variety of subjects regarding reasoning with evidence and proof. Other seminal work in the tradition of the New Evidence Theory is contained in Rethinking Evidence (Twining, 2006) . Finally, Peter Tiller’s website (Tillers, 2006) can also be used as an invaluable source on (the law of) evidence in the tradition of the New Evidence Theory.

  5. 5.

    Nijboer (2000, p. 28), however, argues that investigation and proof in criminal cases can be characterized as “special forms of empirical investigation and proof” and that Dutch jurists largely agree with a rationalist notion of knowledge.

  6. 6.

    An English adaptation was publishedas (Wagenaaretal.,1993). Other work which stands in the same tradition is Wagenaar and Crombag (2005) and De Poot et al. (2004), in which the Anchored Narratives Theory is applied to police investigation.

  7. 7.

    Examples are CaseMap (http://www.casesoft.com/casemap/casemap.asp; accessed on 26 July 2010) and Analyst’s Notebook (http://www.i2.co.uk/Products/Analysts_Notebook/default.asp; accessed on 26 July 2010).

  8. 8.

    The increased public nature of decisions in the Netherlands (cf. van Lent, 2008) forces judges to explain their decisions more thourougly and intelligibly.

  9. 9.

    These three aims are adapted from Verheij’s (1996) discussion of the aims of formally modelling argumentation.

  10. 10.

    See Prakken (1997, Chapter 1) for a brief discussion of the role of logic in AI.

  11. 11.

    Examples are Araucaria (http://araucaria.computing.dundee.ac.uk; accessed on 26 July 2010) and Rationale (http://rationale.austhink.com; accessed on 26 July 2010). See (Verheij, 2005b; van den Braak, 2010, pp. 35–45) for overviews.

  12. 12.

    In some tools, like Rationale, the underlying logic is basic and largely implicit (cf. van Gelder, 2007) whereas other tools, like Argumed, essentially allow the user to build arguments using an explicit argumentation logic (cf. Verheij, 1999).

  13. 13.

    A notable exception here are Pardo and Allen (2007), who advocate using stories to explain the evidence.

  14. 14.

    In particular legal theory, legal psychology, philosophy, argumentation theory, cognitive modelling and AI.

  15. 15.

    The project is a collaboration between the Centre for Law and ICT (University of Groningen), the department of Artificial Intelligence (University of Groningen) and the Intelligent Systems Group (Utrecht University). For more information, see: http://www.cs.uu.nl/research/projects/evidence/ (last accessed on July 19, 2010).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Dundee, School of Computing, DD1 4HN, Dundee, UK

    Floris J. Bex

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Correspondence to Floris J. Bex .

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Bex, F.J. (2011). Introduction. In: Arguments, Stories and Criminal Evidence. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 92. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0140-3_1

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